Sri Lanka reefs 'survive tsunami'

[DELUSIONAL]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/4184277.stm

Coral reefs around the coast of Sri Lanka may have suffered much less damage from the Indian Ocean tsunami than was initially feared, early surveys have suggested.

As well as causing so much loss of life and devastation on land, it was feared that the giant waves would have destroyed coral reef systems around the affected countries.

But marine biologists are now reporting that their first findings are that the situation is not as bad as feared.

"We have found some things that reflect the situation on land - and some things that don't," Jerker Tamelander, marine programme co-ordinator of the World Conservation Union in Sri Lanka, told BBC World Service's Science In Action programme.

"One thing is that damage is very patchy. It varies a lot, from one area to another, and it varies a lot within a certain area.

"A lot of the mechanical damage seems to have been caused by boats washing over coral reefs, and in turn pushing over large boulders, so there's very site-specific damage - whereas on the broad scale, the mechanical damage is much less."